History Taught In Pakistan

[acharya]

http://www.sdpi.org/archive/nayyar_report.htm

The subtle Subversion: A report on Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan

Updated August 2006

Compiled by A. H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim

* The subtle Subversion: A report on Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan (PDF Format 513KB)


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The objective of the study was to identify problematic contents of textbooks and to
ascertain if the curriculum formulation was the source of such contents. The subjects
chosen were those which can offer a greater space for political and ideological
manipulation.
States quite often use formal education as a tool to disseminate and perpetuate their
political messages. In the Pakistani context, the use of education as a political tool
intensified after 1971 mainly due to the demands of redefining Pakistan after the political
crisis of East Pakistan and emergence of Pakistan as a truncated country. The military
government of General Zia ul Haq after the coup in 1977 had its own problem of
legitimacy, which it tried to guise in an overarching quest for Islamization of the society.
Education was among the first of its victims. Religious political parties became
enthusiastic partners in this quest. In the educational sphere, this amounted to a
distorted narration of history, factual inaccuracies, inclusion of hate material, a
disproportionate inclusion of Islamic studies in other disciplines, glorification of war and
the military, gender bias, etc. Subsequent governments either failed to check these
harmful deviations, or willingly perpetuated them.
This study is by no means the first to point out these issues. The civil society of Pakistan
reacted almost immediately to the Zia government’s policies of Islamization of education.
A number of educationists wrote articles, research papers and books highlighting the
way in which the educational space was being usurped by blatant indoctrination. The first
question they addressed was regarding distortions in history, and the contributions of
Pervez Hoodbhoy, K. K. Aziz, I. A. Rahman, Mubarak Ali, and A. H. Nayyar were
noteworthy. The first known work on the deliberate distortion of history for ideological
The Subtle Subversion: The state of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan
reasons was from Pervez Hoodbhoy and A. H. Nayyar1, pointing out the policy directive
that had brought about the change and the subsequent distortions entering the Pakistan
Studies textbooks, the foremost target of the process of Islamization of education. Soon
thereafter, the Lahore-based Society for the Advancement of Education (SAHE)
produced a report in 1986 on Pakistan’s curriculum based on a countrywide consultation
involving a number of eminent educationists of the country2.
Mubarak Ali, through his thought provoking works, brought forth the distortions,
inaccuracies and biases in textbooks through his books3, newspaper articles4 and
booklets both in English and Urdu.
K.K. Aziz also pointed out errors in history textbooks in a chapter of his book Historians
of Pakistan, published in the early 90s5. In another famous book on the subject, Murder
of History in Pakistan, Professor Aziz analysed in detail 66 school textbooks and
identified historical errors and inaccuracies6.
Renowned human rights activist and journalist, I. A. Rahman has also touched upon the
issue of historical distortion in textbooks regarding the tragedy of 1971 (Fall of Dhaka)7.
The earliest work on gender bias in textbooks emerged from Simorgh and Aurat
Foundation, NGO’s that specialize in women related issues.8
In 1993 Rubina Saigol conducted a content analysis of language and social studies
textbooks to find out the amount of hate material, and nationalistic and militaristic
ideologies packed in the textbooks. In her Ph.D. thesis in the early nineties and
subsequently in her various research papers, books and monographs, she conducted a
detailed analysis of social studies, civics, history and Pakistan Studies textbook. She
also identified such additional categories of problems in curriculum and textbooks as
'glorification of the military', and did a comparative analysis of textbooks from the pre-
Ayub period, Ayub era and the Bhutto era.9

Several other writers also highlighted the issues, among them were Tariq Rahman10,
1 Re-writing the History of Pakistan, in Islam, Politics and the State: The Pakistan Experience, Ed.
Mohammad Asghar Khan, Zed Books, London, 1985).
2 Pakistan Curriculum Jungle, An analysis emerging out of the SAHE consultation on the undergraduate core
curriculum in Pakistan, Ed. Hamid Kizilbash, SAHE, Lahore, 1986.
3 For example Tareekh aur Roshni, Nigarshat Lahore 1986; In the Shadow of History, Nigarshat, Lahore;
History on Trial, Fiction House, Lahore, 1999; Tareekh Aur Nisabi Kutub, Fiction House, Lahore, 2003.
4 For example, ‘Heroes and Democracy’ and Akbar in Pakistani Textbooks
5 Historians of Pakistan, K. K. Aziz, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1993.
6 Murder of History in Pakistan, K. K. Aziz, Vanguard Books, Lahore, 1993
7 The Frontier Post, December 13, 1991, Lahore.
8 School Texts, Nasreen Shah, in Reinventing Women – the Representation of Women in the Media during
the Zia Years, Ed. Maha Malik and Neelum Hussain, Simorgh Publications, 1985; Gender bias in Urdu
Textbooks in Punjab, Class I – V, Aurat Publications, 1989.
9 Her work is spread in Education: Critical Perspectives (Progressive, 1993), The Boundaries of
Consciousness: Interface between the Curriuclum, Gender and Nationalism; Knowledge and Identity –
Articulation of Gender in Educational Discourse in Pakistan, ASR, Lahore, 1995; Qaumiat, Taleem aur
Shanakht, Fiction House, Lahore, 1997; Symbolic Violence (appeared in Locating the Self, ASR, Lahore,
1994), ‘History, Social Studies and Civics and the Creation of Enemies’ in Akbar Zaidi, Social Sciences in
the 1990s (2003), and in the various issues of the journal Tareekh, Ed. Mubarak Ali, Lahore
10 Language, Ideology and Power: Language Learning among the Muslims of Pakistan and North India, Tariq
Rahman, Oxford University Press, Karachi, 2002
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Preface
Khurshid Hasanain11, Yvette Rosser12, Ahmed Salim13 Zafarullah Khan14 and Ajmal
Kamal15. Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology (SZABIST)
brought out a collective study on the contents of Pakistan Studies textbooks from school
to the university level.16 More recently, The Social Policy and Development Centre,
Karachi has published a comprehensive report17 on the state of education in Pakistan
containing also a critique of the learning material.
What was happening to Pakistani school curriculum and textbooks was also happening
to the learning material in India. While it was Islamization in Pakistan, it was
communalization of education in India, which in effect was an effort at Hinduization of
education. The Indian civil society and academia was as much, if not more, alive to the
disturbing trend as its counterpart in Pakistan. The earliest work criticising distortion of
History in Indian textbooks to provoke communal hatred was Tareekh ke saath
Khalwar18, published in 1988. This book included studies and papers read in a seminar
held in Patna. Two civil society organisations stand out as the torch bearers against
communalization of education; Communalism Combat, a periodical edited by the award
winning activist Teesta Setalvad19, and Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT)20.
Among the more well-known works is the recently published Prejudice and Pride by
Krishna Kumar21, which discusses in detail the distortion of facts and communal
elements in Indian and Pakistani textbooks. The Delhi Historian’ Group published an
analysis of history textbooks in India22. Political parties have also written on the
ideological onslaught of the extremists.23
Part II
Why was a new study on state of curricula and textbooks needed? There were several
reasons. First, new textbooks are published almost every year, and it was essential to
see if the most recent ones also contained the same objectionable material both in terms
of inaccuracies as well as pedagogical slant and style. Second, the Curriculum Wing of
11 Conflict and Violence in the Educational Process, Khurshid Hasanain and A. H. Nayyar, in Making
Enemies, Creating Conflict: Pakistan's Crises of State and Society', edited by Zia Mian and Iftikhar Ahmad,
Mashal, Lahore, 1997.
12 Hegemony and Historiography: The Politics of Pedagogy, Yvette Rosser, The Asian Review, Dhaka, 1997.
13 Enemy Images In The Textbooks, Ahmad Salim, in Kashmir: What Next? by Friedrich Nauman-Stiftung,
Islamabad, October 2001; Enemy Images In The School Textbook, 1947-2000, Ahmad Salim and Zafrullah
Khan, SDPI's Draft Report, April 2003.
14 Ideas on Democracy, Freedom and Peace in Textbooks, an advocacy document against hate speech by
Future Youth Group, Islamabad, May 2002.
15 Censorship in Pakistani Urdu Textbooks, Ajmal Kamal, presented at the Annual Sustainable Development
Conference, Islamabad, 2003. Also available at http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/10/16censorship.pdf
16 Pakistan Studies – Facts and Fiction, a study conducted by Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science
and Technology, Karachi, 2002.
17 The State of Education, Social Development in Pakistan, Annual Review 2002-2003, SPDC, Karachi, 2002
18 Tareekh ke saath Khalwar, Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna, 1988
19 How Textbooks Teach Prejudice, Teesta Setalvad, Subrang Communications and Publishing, 2001, and
Communalism Combat 15 June, 2003
20 The Saffron Agenda in Education: An Expose, Nalini Taneja, SAHMAT, New Delhi, 2001; The Assault on
History, SAHMAT, New Delhi, 2002; Against Communalism of Education, SAHMAT, New Delhi, 2002;
Plagiarised and Communalised: more on the NCERT Textbooks, SAHMAT, New Delhi
21 Prejudice and Pride : School Histories of the Freedom Struggle in India and Pakistan, Krishna Kumar,
Viking, New Delhi, 2001.
22 Communalization of Education: History Textbooks, Delhi Historians’ Group, New Delhi, 2001
23 Against Communalisation of Education (CPI-M); Resist the Communalisation of Education; Resist BJP
Assault on School Education (Communist Party Publications, 2002)
iii
The Subtle Subversion: The state of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan
the Ministry of Education was revising all the curricula in the spring of 2002, and it was
essential to analyse them too.
Third, none of the earlier studies appeared to have had any impact on either the
government policies or the public discourse on education. Generation after generation
was being lost to bad education, yet providing quality education was never on the
political agenda of the country. The problems needed to be highlighted in their true
severity to bring the issues into the domain of public debate. Lastly, it was also deemed
essential to make a collective study in order to bring together all the various perspectives
from which individual analysts had looked at the educational material.
The initiative at SDPI was taken by A. H. Nayyar and Ahmed Salim and joined in by
Mohsin Babbar, Ayesha Inayat and Aamna Mattu. A research project was developed and
such educationists who had expressed their opinion on the issue were invited to be a
part of it. They were university professors, school and college teachers, and members of
civil society organisations in the private sector. Their names are listed in ….. Two 2-day
workshops were held. In the first workshop, ideas were formulated, areas of focus were
defined, and tasks assigned to the program participants to take home and bring back
their studies in the second workshop three weeks later. It was also decided to focus only
on the subjects of Social Studies, Pakistan Studies, Urdu, English and Civics. Most of
the participants brought their in-depth studies of the learning material in the second
workshop. Their contributions, which were scrutinised and discussed in detail
collectively, have become the source of the contents of this report. While everyone had
something to contribute, some like Rubina Saigol, Neelum Hussain, Seema Pervez,
Zarina Salamat, Haroon Nasir, to name a few, contributed more than others. Among
them too, the well-focused written contributions of Rubina Saigol formed the mainstay of
several chapters of this report. The second workshop also assigned the task of preparing
detailed analyses based on the collective contributions to some participants. These
appear in the report as chapters in the name(s) of the writer(s).
Indeed not all the material pointed out by the participants was new. Since much of the
material in textbooks is repeated in newer editions, there was to be an inevitable overlap
with earlier works on the subject, particularly because many of the participants had
themselves written extensively on the issue. Similarly, although the group looked into the
most recent curriculum documents, there was to be an inevitable large overlap between
the problematic material pointed out in earlier studies and the one in this report.
After completion, the first draft report was shared with some friends for review and
improvements, and the draft report released on 16 June 2003. The report has been
widely commented on in the press in Pakistan, India and elsewhere. The extraordinary
attention this report has received as compared to more scholarly works earlier may have
been a result of the special circumstances Pakistan is facing since September 2001.
The final report at hand is a reviewed and edited version of the draft report. Hopefully,
our findings and suggestions will help improve the educational material in Pakistan.
iv
SUMMARY
Pakistan’s public education system has an important role in determining how successful
we shall be in achieving the goal of a progressive, moderate and democratic Pakistan. A
key requirement is that children learn to understand and value this goal and cherish the
values of truthfulness, honesty, responsibility, equality, justice, and peace that go with it.
Children’s identities and value systems are strongly shaped by the national curricula and
textbooks in Social Studies, English, Urdu and Civics from Class I to Class XII. The
responsibility for designing them lies with the Curriculum Wing of the Federal Ministry of
Education and the provincial Text Book Boards. The Curriculum Wing is mandated to
design all pre-university curricula and issue guidelines to textbook writers and school
teachers. Provincial Textbook Boards commission writing of textbooks and get them
printed after their contents are approved by the Curriculum Wing.
A close analysis by a group of independent scholars shows that for over two decades the
curricula and the officially mandated textbooks in these subjects have contained material
that is directly contrary to the goals and values of a progressive, moderate and
democratic Pakistan.
The March 2002 revision of curricula undertaken by the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry
of Education did not address the problems that existed in earlier curriculum documents.
In some cases, these problems are now even worse.
Our analysis found that some of the most significant problems in the current curricula
and textbooks are:
􀁸􀀃 Inaccuracies of fact and omissions that serve to substantially distort the nature and
significance of actual events in our history.
􀁸􀀃 Insensitivity to the existing religious diversity of the nation
􀁸􀀃 Incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of Jehad and
Shahadat
􀁸􀀃 Perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow
citizens, especially women and religious minorities, and other towards nations.
􀁸􀀃 A glorification of war and the use of force
􀁸􀀃 Omission of concepts, events and material that could encourage critical selfawareness
among students
The Subtle Subversion: The state of Curricula and Textbooks in Pakistan
􀁸􀀃 Outdated and incoherent pedagogical practices that hinder the development of
interest and insight among students
To give a few examples:
The books on Social Studies systematically misrepresent events that have happened
throughout the Pakistan’s history, including those which are within living memory of many
people.
This history is narrated with distortions and omissions. The causes, effects, and
responsibility for key events are presented so as to leave a false understanding of our
national experience. A large part of the history of South Asia is also omitted, making it
difficult to properly interpret events, and narrowing the perspective that should be open
to students. Worse, the material is presented in ways that encourage the student to
marginalize and be hostile towards other social groups and people in the region.
The curricula and textbooks are insensitive to the religious diversity of the Pakistani
society. While learning of Islamiat is compulsory for Muslim students, on average over a
quarter of the material in books to teach Urdu as a language is on one religion. The
books on English have lessons with religious content. Islamiat is also taught in Social
Studies classes. Thus, the entire is heavily laden with religious teachings, reflecting a
very narrow view held by a minority among Muslims that all the education should be
essentially that of Islamiat.24
There is a strong current of exclusivist and divisive tendencies at work in the subject
matter recommended for studies in the curriculum documents as well as in textbooks.
Pakistani nationalism is repeatedly defined in a manner that excludes non-Muslim
Pakistanis from either being Pakistani nationals or from even being good human beings.
Much of this material runs counter to any efforts at national integration.
The Constitution of Pakistan is cited but misinterpreted, in making the reading of the
Qur'an compulsory in schools. The Constitution requires the compulsory reading of the
Qur’an for Muslim students alone, but in complete disregard of this restriction, it is
included in the textbooks of a compulsory subject like Urdu which is to be read by
students of all religions. The Class III Urdu textbook has 7 lessons on Nazra Qur'an and
its translations. The Urdu and Social Studies curricula even ask for all the students to be
taught Islamic religious practices like Namaz and Wuzu.
Besides severe pedagogical problems like uneven standards of lessons in books on
English and Urdu languages and bad English even in the English language books,
glaring contradictions exist in books on Social Studies. Together, these factors make it
almost impossible for students to develop critical and analytical skills.
The curriculum as well as textbooks excessively emphasize the "Ideology of Pakistan"
which is a post-independence construction devised to sanctify their politics of those
political forces which were initially inimical to the creation of Pakistan
Most of the textbook problems cited above have their origin in two sources: (1)
curriculum documents and syllabi and (2) the instructions to textbook authors issued
24 Education and the Muslim World: Challenge and Response. Recommendations of the Four World
Conferences on Islamic Education, Institute of Policy Studies, Islamabad, 1995.
vi
Summary
from the Curriculum Wing of the Ministry of Education. As long as the same institutions
continue to devise curricula, the problems will persist. Repeated interventions from the
post-1988 civilian governments failed to overcome the institutional resistance.
The problems are further accentuated when the authors of textbooks produce books that
are heavily laden with doctrinal material and devoid of much useful instructional content.
The provincial textbook boards are to be held squarely responsible for repeatedly failing
to produce textbooks that are useful and interesting to students.
vii